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What's nice about the Crosshair V is that despite being so well equipped it isn't intimidating.

Having said all that, the Crosshair V Formula isn't the most highly specced motherboard ASUS has ever made.

Some of the extras that you'll find in the Extreme range of motherboards like Bluetooth – which is useful for overclocking via a mobile phone – are noticeable by their absence.

But there is a host of ways the Asus RoG Crosshair V Formula makes things easy for the user.

The new UEFI graphical BIOS, for example is well laid out and simple to use. And while the ASUS software utilities are hateful if you ever try to uninstall them, so long as you leave them doing their own thing they're a straightforward gateway to controlling not just the CPU clock settings but also ASUS' Push-me-pull-you chips, TPU and EPU. These automatically undervolt or overclock other motherboard components depending on current system load.

It's the little things that make the biggest difference though.

Things like the inclusion of an X-Fi chip for sound (this isn't a full blown X-Fi, mind, but it is better than normal on board audio) and one touch overclocking buttons.

There's an extra couple of USB 3.0 ports over and above the norm too.

Sadly, though, as fun as the Crosshair V is, value for money does have to come into play at some point.

It's not terrible in this regard – ASUS own Sabertooth 990FX is almost identical but has a worse soundcard for £10 less – but it'd still be unwise to shell out for a top spec motherboard without knowing how good Bulldozer is going to be or how much it's going to cost.

And that last point is critical – because if AMD's next CPU can undercut its Intel rivals significantly, it's going to be worth buying a premium board to make the most of it.

And they don't come much more premium than this.

We liked

The Crosshair V has got just about everything you could wish for to build a high end system around.

It's fast, endlessly teakable and even has a decent on board sound chip.

This motherboard supports latest AMD Socket AM3+ multi-core processors with up to 8 native CPU cores and delivers better overclocking capabilities with less power consumption. It features AMD Turbo CORE Technology 2.0 and accelerates data transfer rate up to 5200MT/s via HyperTransport 3.0 based system bus. This motherboard also supports AMD CPUs in the new 32nm manufacturing process.